Innovation in tourism has taken center stage in a context marked by increasingly demanding technological, environmental, and competitive changes. More than just a driver of modernization, it has become an essential prerequisite for improving the quality of tourism offerings, accelerating business adaptation, fostering new products, services, and business models, and strengthening the sector’s resilience and sustainability. In Portugal, this evolution takes on particular relevance in a context where tourism consumption accounted for 16.6% of GDP in 2024.
It was within this context that innovation began to take on a more structured role in tourism policy. Tourism 4.0 played a key role in kickstarting this process by aligning the sector with the agenda of digital transformation, entrepreneurship, and experimentation, laying the groundwork for more sustained action, driven by Turismo de Portugal, and for the development of tools specifically tailored to the tourism ecosystem.
In 2016, the FIT Program - Fostering Innovation in Tourism was launched. Designed to help streamline innovative tourism-based projects and stimulate the entrepreneurial ecosystem, it operates through a network of incubators and accelerators, aiming to help create ideas and business models that generate new solutions for the tourism sector.
The NEST Association - Tourism Innovation Center was founded in 2019. Eight public and private entities, including companies from the banking, mobility, technology, telco and transport sectors, came together with the mission of promoting innovation through technology, experimentation, and by enhancing business capacity for the digital transition. NEST further distinguishes itself through its close ties to academia and research centres.
The creation of the CIBT - Technology-Based Incubation Centre in 2024 reinforces this trajectory, providing a dedicated infrastructure for the incubation and development of technology-based solutions linked to tourism.
Together, all these tools embody the shift from a piecemeal approach to modernization to a more structured approach to innovation in tourism, based on creating conditions to test solutions, mobilize talent, bring businesses and knowledge together, and accelerate the sector’s response to emerging challenges.
